POLARIZED FIBER LASER SOURCE

摘要

A polarized fiber laser source includes a fiber laser (10) comprising a pair of Bragg gratings (14, 16) at opposite ends of a fiber laser cavity (18) which is doped with a rare-earth dopant so as to allow lasing to occur at a lasing wavelength lambda L. A grating tap (26) is provided along a portion of the laser cavity (18) to couple-out a predetermined amount of light along one polarization, e.g., the "s" polarization, at the lasing wavelength lambda L. This causes one polarization mode to experience more loss than the other, thereby allowing the fiber laser to lase only on the less lossy polarization mode and causing the laser output light (40) to be polarized only along such polarization.